1. Field
The presently claimed invention relates to ad-hoc networks, and more specifically to dynamically sharing resources as hosts enter and leave the network, and a system for negotiation and allocation of resources among hosts.
2. Background
When a wireless device needs to access a resource or service provided by another wireless device, they need to pair up and establish dedicated ad-hoc service between them. With the increased use of wireless ad-hoc networks, it is desirable to have the ability to share such resource and/or service provided by one client among multiple ad-hoc hosts.
At present, a solution is available where a wireless host can copy the data to a remote hard disk after establishing a wireless ad-hoc network. However, it is desirable that two or more users can archive their data from their portable devices to the same hard disk simultaneously. The presently claimed invention provides a solution by making a remote hard disk “just intelligent enough” so multiple users can share its memory.
There are proposals that would allow a wireless host to access the remote screen and render its own images onto this bigger remote screen. However, it is desirable that two or more hosts can setup the ad-hoc network and share the remote display. With the claimed invention, they can negotiate the amount of sharing, and coordinate their sharing.
Another classic example is some TV sets support picture-in-picture where multiple channels share the display area. However, a lot of “intelligence” is required inside the TV set. The TV set can only handle a fixed number of sources. Also, the sharing of display regions is fixed. This proposal enables simple clients to share the display by controlling the images' resolution sent by the ad-hoc hosts, dynamically. It also allows as many hosts as possible to access the resources in an ad-hoc manner. The resource allocation is flexible based on the negotiation among the hosts.